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Conservatives hold Whitby-Oshawa, Alberta seat in byelections

Pat Perkins won the Whitby-Oshawa seat previously held by the late Jim Flaherty.

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The Conservatives held onto the late Jim Flaherty's seat in the Whitby-Oshawa byelection, narrowly defeating a rookie Liberal candidate. Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau says the close result sends a message to the Harper government.(The Canadian Press - News (En))

Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservatives survived a tough fight with the Liberals on Monday night to hold on to a seat with symbolic and sentimental significance — the Whitby-Oshawa riding held for a decade by the late finance minister, Jim Flaherty.

Conservatives kept the riding and preserved Flaherty’s legacy, but the margin of victory was nowhere near as wide as what the former finance minister enjoyed after first being elected in 2006.

Justin Trudeau’s Liberals strongly chipped away at the Conservative stronghold, with Celina Caesar-Chavannes in a neck-and-neck race all night with the Tory candidate, former Whitby mayor Pat Perkins.

With nearly all the results in late Monday night, the Conservatives and Liberals were separated by less than eight percentage points.

The closeness of the race will buoy Liberal hopes for the 2015 election, while potentially sending a chill through the ruling Conservatives’ hopes for retaining power after the next general vote.

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The New Democrats trailed far behind in third place, which will also prompt some hard thinking in NDP circles next year.

In Yellowhead, Tory candidate Jim Eglinski, a former RCMP officer, had captured 64 per cent of the vote with just over half of the polls reporting. Liberal Ryan Mahugn trailed far behind at 18 per cent.

In Whitby, Perkins told her victory party at a local Legion hall that she promised to work with Harper to make the quality of life for every Canadian better and safer.

She pointed out that a lot of attention and investment has been focused on Toronto and west of Toronto “but the growth isn’t there anymore.”

“The growth is here (Whitby-Oshawa) and we need the partnerships and investments to keep it healthy here and allow those people moving here to have the quality of life they expect.”

Turnout in both byelections was shaping up to be dismal — around 30 per cent in Whitby-Oshawa and less than 15 per cent in Yellowhead.

Though byelections are not always reliable for predicting future voting trends, the Whitby-Oshawa campaign was nonetheless seen as a proving ground for the major parties as next year’s federal election looms closer.

The riding sits in prime GTA territory, bound to be a major battleground in 2015, where Conservatives need to hold on to their suburban bastions, and Liberals and New Democrats are fighting to be seen as the real alternative to the Harper government for middle-class voters.

The Conservatives and Flaherty won the riding handily with 58 per cent of the vote in 2011 — more than 30 points ahead of his nearest rival. The NDP came second with 22 per cent, and the Liberals had just 14 per cent, in their worst showing in federal election history.

This byelection was expected to be a lot closer than 2011 — two Forum polls for the Star showed the Conservatives and Liberals tightly competitive throughout the campaign and in a statistical dead heat last week — 44 per cent for the Conservatives, 40 per cent for the Liberals, with a margin of error a 4 percentage points.

Those same polls put NDP candidate Trish McAuliffe at a distant third, with just 12 per cent in the latest survey — well behind her second-place finish in the 2011 general election.

McAuliffe was quoted in media reports saying that while Flaherty was her chief opponent in 2011, Justin Trudeau was her main rival in this campaign.

Perkins also mentioned Trudeau’s presence.

“The third party leader had a sway in some of the vote, but he did not prevail,” Perkins said Monday night, referring to Trudeau’s campaigning in the riding on behalf of Caesar-Chavannes

So the pressure was on Trudeau’s team in Whitby-Oshawa. Liberals needed to place a strong second, at the very least, to maintain their boast of momentum behind Trudeau.

Since he became leader in April 2013, Liberals have won five out of nine byelections that were held before Monday’s votes, and they have increased their share of the popular vote by around 20 per cent overall.

Trudeau’s Liberals have also managed to take seats away from the Conservatives in Labrador in May 2013, and one from the NDP in Trinity-Spadina this past June.

The NDP, meanwhile, has won only of a dozen byelections held since Thomas Mulcair became leader in March 2012, and their share of the popular vote has declined between 6 per cent and 9 per cent.

Trudeau visited Whitby-Oshawa three times during the official campaign, including his election-night visit on Monday, as well as a couple of times during the summer.

Mulcair also paid a couple of calls on Whitby-Oshawa throughout the summer, but was in St. John’s Monday night to attend the nomination meeting of MP Ryan Cleary. Mulcair’s absence and Trudeau’s presence in the riding were viewed as early indications of how prospects were shaping up for both opposition parties.

Though the riding was vacant since April, it was not included in a set of byelections that were held at the end of June. Conservatives said it was “too soon” to put a new MP in the seat to replace Flaherty, though there was some speculation that the riding was being kept open in case Flaherty’s widow, MPP Christine Elliott, had wanted to run.

Elliott decided instead to seek the leadership of the Ontario PC party — a race in which she’s the front-runner. Elliott endorsed Perkins’ candidacy and two of Flaherty’s sons served as honorary co-chairs of her campaign.

Prime ministers traditionally do not campaign in byelections but Harper was in Whitby to announce a child-fitness tax break just three days before he formally set the date for the vote to replace Flaherty.

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